Reality TV Preceded Privacy’s Collapse

The article argues that America’s erosion of privacy started before social media, with 1970s reality TV and later confessional talk shows normalizing public exposure of intimate life. The Loud family’s 1973 An American Family — and Lance Loud inviting cameras to his death — exemplify a voluntary turn toward self‑surveillance that TV monetized long before Facebook or TikTok. — This reframes tech‑centric privacy debates by showing culture and media incentives, not just platforms, primed people to trade intimacy for attention.